


Bet On You

by youarenotmybus



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Pining, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25059652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youarenotmybus/pseuds/youarenotmybus
Summary: Set during season two, episode eight, "Drive With a Dead Girl." What Cooper is thinking duringthatscene with Audrey.
Relationships: Dale Cooper & Audrey Horne, Dale Cooper/Audrey Horne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Bet On You

“Did you arrest him ‘cause of what I said?”

Audrey’s words hang heavy in the air between them. She leans against the wooden paneling of the wall, feigning nonchalance. Her eyes, however, betray the truth. This isn’t easy for her, to see her father arrested, and Dale Cooper knows it. No matter how proud she is that she was able to assist Cooper in his work, to put her father behind bars still stings more than she’ll ever admit to him.

That’s the Ben Horne in her, he thinks. Proud to a fault. But she’s forgotten that she can’t hide the truth from him. Not when he knows her all too well by now. He’s well versed in all her secrets, and every flicker of hope or whisper of a dream she’s ever had. He made sure of that the night they sat in his room talking over malts and fries.

“Only in part,” he answers, eyes brimming with sincerity. He prays with every fiber in his being that he believes her, that this can assuage even a fraction of her guilt.

“But it helped,” she counters, tipping her head to the side.

He nods, dropping his gaze to the floor and back up again. “Yeah,” he whispers. He doesn’t say any more, afraid that anything else he adds will only make things worse. As it is he can see tears welling in her wounded eyes. He finds the urge rising in him to kiss them away, but dismisses it as quickly as it came.

“All I ever wanted,” she breathes, “was for him to love me.”

The way she’s looking at him, Cooper almost wonders if she’s not talking about her father anymore.

“I’m sure he does,” Cooper says, stepping closer. In that moment he’s not sure who he’s talking about either.

There’s a silence between them fraught with a thousand unspoken sentiments. They both know that door has closed, and it has to stay that way for both their sakes. But when Audrey is standing before him, cheeks and lips flushed crimson, looking at him from under lashes thick with tears, he can’t help but wish it weren't so.

“He’s ashamed of me,” Audrey says. He can tell she believes it, too. How anyone could be ashamed of Audrey is beyond him. He once told her she was intelligent, and beautiful, and everything a man wanted in his life. He wasn’t lying when he said those things.

He wants to tell her those things again, but is afraid of crossing the invisible line he’s done so well at toeing. “He’s not,” is all he says, knowing full well it’s inadequate.

Audrey wanders over to his bed and takes a seat on the mattress. “Agent Cooper?” she says, and he can see the gears shift in her head. He leans against the footboard, bracing himself for whatever she’s going to say next.

“When I was at One Eyed Jack’s, I never, never let anyone–”

“Audrey,” he interrupts. “You don’t have to say anything.”

A wave of guilt washes over him at the mention of One Eyed Jack's. Even though Audrey made the choice to go undercover, he still feels personally responsible. He can’t help but feel relieved that she never slept with any of the clientele. Not because he’d think any less of her, like she fears, but because he could never live with himself if she’d made that sacrifice on his behalf.

“I want to,” she insists, adamant as ever. “I want you to know.” It breaks his heart that she thinks something like that could tarnish his high opinion of her.

“I know,” he answers. There’s so much more he wants to say. 

There’s always more he wants to say to Audrey.

The things he wants to tell her would take days. Months. Years, even.

Before he makes the mistake of saying any of them, the phone rings. Cooper thanks whatever god is listening for the interruption. Still, his gaze lingers on her for the duration of the first ring. And the second. Sometimes he wonders if there are magnets behind her eyes that make it nearly impossible for anyone to look away. Audrey Horne, he decides, is an electromagnetic field unto herself.

“Okay,” she says finally.

The phone rings for the third time. Somehow Cooper manages to pull himself away to pick it up. Still, he is infinitely aware of her watching him walk around the bed to the nightstand.

Lately it feels like every time he talks to Audrey it’s a close call. He worries that one of these days he’ll finally lose all resolve and kiss her in the way he doesn’t even allow himself to imagine.

And yet he can’t cut himself off from her completely. She needs somebody, he reasons, for moments like these. She needs someone to tell her not to be ashamed of herself. She needs someone to remind her of all the things she is, and all the things she can be.

He believes in Audrey Horne. He believes in her more than almost anything else in the known universe. He’d bet all the money that flows through One Eyed Jack's on her, and anyone who wouldn’t, he thinks, is a fool.


End file.
